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Purpose –– The purpose of this chapter is to test the managerial decision-making knowledge of Mexican administrators managing maquiladora plants, or ‘twin plants’, in the effort to devise a practical skill set assessment.

Design/methodology/approach –– A sample of Mexican maquiladora managers was studied along dimensions of gender, experience, proximity to parent firm and upward mobility in order to assess the managers' level of ‘managerial intelligence’, where the constructs of tacit knowledge and intuition were used as proxies for managerial intelligence.

Findings –– While managerial decision-making may be classified as special forms of knowledge, assessment of this knowledge as forms of tacit ‘knowing’ did not prove successful.

Research limitations/implications –– Due to limitations of time and money in conjunction with the characteristically low response rate on surveys in Mexico, the sample was rather limited given the number and size of ‘twin plants’ and not wholly random. Thus, future research will need to address these shortcomings.

Originality/value –– This chapter is an effort to fill a gap in the literature regarding measures of tacit knowledge and the effort to elucidate the operation and management of plants in Mexico's maquiladora industry.

During the last 15 years of the 20th century cities in the mexican northern border experienced an impressive increase of foreign investment specially in electronics and autoparts. Word class techniques, certifications like ISO 9000, more sophisticated manufacturing processes spread trough a handful of very big plants. Although these changes changed the skills requirements in technical levels, no significative evidence has been found in labor lowest levels, were routine operations and scarce opportunities to build a career are the most common situation.

In this chapter, the authors examine the turnover of employees in Latin America, with a particular focus on Mexico. Employee turnover is important in Latin America and in Mexico, as it is in many other places, because the cost of labor typically accounts for 70% of a firm’s operating cost. When employees leave, it requires that the employer replaces the workers through human resource management processes that include recruiting, selection, orientation, and training. These costs are a significant expense to firms that they could avoid if turnover was lower. The authors identify cultural, economic, legal, and other factors that could influence employee turnover. The authors also summarize many managerial practices that can help employers to effectively manage employee turnover. Finally, the authors provide insights for future research on employee turnover in this important region of the world.

In Western Culture, feminist campaigns have acted as a catalyst behind major societal changes regarding women's rights. Throughout history, feminism has encompassed a range of social and political movements aiming to establish and define equality of the sexes in societies where the male point of view is prioritised, and injustices occur towards women, solely because of their gender. This inequality in turn reinforces harmful gender stereotypes, roles and dynamics. Although this advocacy primarily focuses on women's rights, many feminists argue for the inclusion of men's liberation as men are also harmed by the perpetuation of traditional gender roles within themselves, which holds the power to harm women if these roles are broken.

Feminist efforts fight to change such marginalising constraints. However, this fight is far from over – especially in Ciudad Juàrez, a Mexican border city experiencing a femicidal crisis where women are being murdered solely because they are women. This is likely due to toxic machismo and marianismo reinforcing the women's lack of rights to body autonomy and free thought. This chapter analyses and examines the many potential contributing factors to these heinous acts such as drug trafficking, organised crime, the emergence of the maquila industry and sociocultural factors like gender roles, and how these factors result in women being othered and viewed as deviant to their society which is so deeply rooted in traditional Catholicism and the gender roles that often apply to those who practice within the area. This notion of deviance ostracises and demonises women who are simply trying to get by, labelling them as monsters in their own society solely for breaking traditional gender roles.

The July 2, 2000, electoral victory of Vicente Fox of the opposition National Action Party (PAN) as president of Mexico marked an historic turning point in that country’s political development. The ouster from power of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) after seventy-one years promised to rupture the long-time alliance between organized labor, the state, and the PRI. A transition to a democratic political regime would create new opportunities for the struggling independent labor movement in Mexico. More importantly, a political transition would make possible for the first time a shift away from an authoritarian-corporatist system of industrial relations toward a democratic model of labor governance.

The article builds upon recent developments in feminist theories as they were adopted in organization studies to review the state of research into women in MNCs and to offer new directions for the study of MNCs as “gendering organizations,” both as they are shaped by gender relations and are active agents in constructing gender categories, division of labor, images, and inequalities. Juxtaposing insights from gender studies and International Business and Management, the article offers a new agenda for the studies of corporate internationalization and its social consequences.

The CANAMEX Trade Corridor plays an important role in routing food supplies for fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, and meats in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Over 400,000 trucks per annum travel this north-south corridor. Industries, consumers, and federal agencies cooperate to make sure food safety and food security works for all participants.

This chapter outlines the underlying factors in North American food supply efforts and highlights some of the disputes and settlements that constitute an important part of the North American food safety system.

Along the CANAMEX Trade Corridor cooperative efforts are being made by all three nations to improve the food safety and food security system for North America. Food safety and food security information is provided in three major languages (English, French, and Spanish) and in over 50 Native American languages.

The modal view of trade in the CANAMEX Trade Corridor shows that 75% of goods move by truck, 18% by rail, and 7% by air (United States Department of Transportation. (2001). US international trade and freight transportation trends. Washington, DC: US Department of Transportation). As border security and food safety/security technology issues heighten, CANAMEX becomes increasingly important in NAFTA negotiations.

With the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, Mexico entered a bilateral free trade agreement which not only lowered its own tariffs on imports but also lowered tariffs on its exports to the United States. We find that women’s relative wage increased, particularly during the period of liberalization. Both between and within-industry shifts also favored female workers. With regards to between-industry shifts, tariff reductions expanded sectors that were initially female intensive. With regards to within-industry shifts, we find a positive association between reductions in export tariffs (U.S. tariffs on Mexican goods) and hiring of women in skilled blue-collar occupations. Finally, we find suggestive evidence that household bargaining power shifted in favor of women. Expenditures shifted from goods associated with male preference, such as men’s clothing and tobacco and alcohol, to those associated with female preference such as women’s clothing and education.

This chapter analyzes spatio-temporal patterns of female homicides in Mexico during the period 1990 to 2018. It analyzes socio-demographic and geographical characteristics of female homicides from which it is possible to apply statistical methods that identify regions with high incidence rates that persist over time. It is also discussed the growing participation of civil society organizations (CSOs) and its role on establishing accountability mechanisms and the developments of public policy programs in light of the poor institutional capacity of the Mexican state to address this problem. The findings here described suggest a demographic and geographic spread of female homicides – that is, the phenomenon of violence against women has reached more significant socio-demographic segments whose incidence covers a greater territorial extension. Furthermore, it is argued that despite the strategies implemented by the federal and local government on addressing the problem, the results are far from being acceptable. As argued, this calls for a nationwide initiative, the involvement of international agencies, and the consolidation of women’s empowerment though participatory mechanisms in all aspects of public life.

As a growing literature points out (Aronowitz, 2009, pp. 165–213), HT becomes criminal because it involves displacing, exploiting and commercializing a human being, all of these necessitating transportation, trade and torture to varying degrees to survive and succeed (Nair, 2010, pp. 12–19). John T. Picarelli informs us, these began ‘in the Americas’ from 1502, ‘when Portuguese traders brought the first African slaves to the Caribbean’ (Picarelli, 2011, p. 180, but see all of Chapter 9). African slaves continued to be imported into the United States until 1808, but by the time the 13th Amendment ‘outlawed’ indentured servitude in 1865, the 645,000 slaves shipped from Africa had multiplied beyond 4 million, to whom were added (a) Chinese women, ‘to work in brothels … to serve both the Chinese and white communities’ after the 1860s; (b) Europeans, through collusion between ‘criminal syndicates’ and ‘U.S. [law enforcement] officials’, in what was called ‘the white slave trade’ from the 1880s (Shelley, 2010, pp. 235, 237); and (c) Hispanics (Alba & Nee, 2003; Gordon, 1964; Suárez-Orozco, 1998), in tandem with the dominant U.S. migratory inflows and economic needs after the 1960s (Borjas, 1999; Huntington, 2004, pp. 30–45), and the emergence of sex tourism after the Cold War (Clift & Carter, 2000; María Agustin, 2007; Rogers, 2009; Thorbek & Bandana Pattanaik, 2002).